Rick's b.log - entry 2026/02/28

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Going shopping

So I did what any Rick would do. I came home, emptied the fridge, threw out the old stuff lurking in the background, and waited forever for the ice to break - and that's including a spell with the heat gun on its 250°C setting (so about the same sort of temperature as the hairdryer, but I couldn't use that as the lead was too short and the lead that I would have normally used was otherwise engaged in throwing electrons at my car.

Eventually the job was done. It required some delicate work around the little metal pipe that is the temperature sensor. I then had to let it get down to its desired temperature and cycle a few times to be sure I hadn't broken the thing. But, everything worked. The fridge was a nice cold, and pleasingly not full of random junk that I never quite found the time or will to do something about.

This morning I got up at eight. Well, I got up and fed Anna at six, dozed off again for a couple of hours. And thanks to the appearance of sun, I actually felt pretty good. I threw the shopping bags and cold box into my car and left at half nine with a fresh tea in me.

By quarter past ten I was in the car park of the Leclerc in Big Town dying for a pee. Once that was sorted, I put on my headphones. My phone suggested a mix of Delain and Iron Maiden, and I walked around.

Got myself an induction-friendly thing that thinks it is a wok. I'm not sure if or when I'll use it, kind of looking at those stir-fry frozen meals here. But it was an own-brand special for €9,95 and to be honest my thought process didn't really get much further than "oh, that's a nice shape".

I got two boxes of expensive Country Store. These two cost the same as the wok. But this supermarket in Châteaubriant is the only place I have found that sells Country Store and, let's be real here, it's the only muesli I'll eat because it is exactly the perfect combination of textures and sizes and nothing is too hard. When somebody says "muesli" to me, this is the first and only thing that comes to mind. What the French call muesli is, well, birdseed. Fancy birdseed, certainly, but it's for crows and sparrows, not for Ricks.

Of course there was an impulse purchase (that wasn't cookware). Of course it was to do with my favourite chocolate.

It is awfully expensive, getting near to the price of one Country Store or half a wok, but the trick here is that I don't actually like my chocolate that strong. I like it milky. What I used to do with the Starbucks caramel hot chocolate (that doesn't seem to exist any more?) was a teaspoon of chocolate powder and three of milk powder. I can see I'll probably do the same with this.

I thought, given the recent weather, that it would be kind of cool to get umbrella girl. Well, result! That was the first one I opened. I also got the ice princess with a rather revealing outfit. Ummm...

Following shopping I popped into Action. Full of people, so I had a very cursory look around. Something presented itself. It cost €9,95. I remembered to use my CMB bank card, because La Banque Postale is geolocked to France and won't work in Action, but the one from the Crédit Mutuel (de Bretagne) is geolocked to Europe so it will.

The frame is fairly cheap because the front is a piece of plastic, not glass. But, hey, it is big enough and it does the job.

Then I stopped by Picard. I had in my mind that what would be nicer on a sunny spring morning on the weekend (or when I'm on holiday at the end of March) to sit out with a nice strong tea and a couple of freshly heated croissants?

If I'm going to take the time to heat some croissants in the oven I can take the time to put teabags into a pot and do it properly. 🫖

The man in the Picard, who is absolutely lovely - by the way, said that next week they are having a "British themed promotion". I was "British? I thought it used to be American in early March?". He told me that there was less appetite for American things these days.
I said it was a shame, and held up the Mac&Cheese that you can see in the above photo.
"Ah, but that's one of ours, it's French."

I replied that that explains why it costs a lot less, one doesn't need to pay tariffs.
He nearly lost it. 😂

It probably also explains why there is less "McEnnedy" stuff in Lidl as well. It's a shame in a way because once you get away from the cliché burgers&bagels, there are some interesting American recipes. But, alas, "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and their current President and his cohorts are playing a lot of stupid games.

Finally, I stopped at Burger King for a drink and pile of onion rings. I avoid burgers because "reasons". I was surprised twice. Firstly, there was no sugar tax on the proper coke (BK is greasy enough that some sugar in a drink is so not going to be what puts the weight on), and secondly their coke actually tasted vaguely like the stuff in the can, not that god-awful chemistry experiment that McDo is trying to pass off as coke.

I was home for quarter to one. That's about the time I finally roused myself the other (cold, miserable, rainy) week.

And now? Now I'm sitting outside to write this. It's nice and sunny, not too cold (for the final day of February) and between the airplanes and the birds there's plenty of noise. I can't wait until I hear the chaffinch again - Chirpy-chirp CHIRP! CHIRP!

Oh, and somewhere along the way (not today) I got a planner that - nicely - starts with the correct day on the left. I've looked at a few on Shein (etc) but they're aimed at Americans so have Sunday on the left, which given as Sunday is the second day of the weekend (and, in religious terms, the seventh day when God rested), it just seems weird and wrong to have Sunday on the left. But I guess it's pointless arguing the point with a population that sees nothing wrong with month-day-year ordering...
As you can see, the life of a single introvert has a pleasing number of blank spaces.

Adventures in woodworking

I got some leftover pieces of wood (1cm by 2.5cm by 200cm, I think), some small screws, and some angle brackets from the local DIY place. Failing having a useful frame, I'll just throw something together. How hard can it be?

So I measured the picture. I then subtracted 1cm for the side, and 1.5cm for the underside. This means I'll need to deduct 5cm (1+1+1½+1½) from the picture size, and make a frame to those dimensions.
If I recall, the picture was 40×60, so I would need a frame that is 35×55. To add complication, since I'm not up to mitred joints, I'll need to inset the longer edges. So I'll need two pieces of 35cm, and two of 51cm (that's -2cm twice).
I make it sound like it was meticulously planned. It wasn't. I had an idea of what I wanted, and was pretty much winging it.

I had an jigsaw that mom bought me a long time ago that I hardly ever used (because I suck at making things). I got it out, cleaned it off, plugged it in, and cut the wood right there in the kitchen. It was like 2°C outside as I was doing this, so the kitchen was where the heater was.

Then I laid the wood pieces out, using the shape of the utility table I was using to get a right angle (more or less). With the wood and brackets in place, I drilled through where each screw would go, making a hole roughly the size of the body of the screw.

In order to understand why I did that, here's a picture I made of whacking some screws into an offcut to show what happens if you don't drill out the screw body. The wood gets pushed aside and whilst this may work with a bit piece of wood, small pieces like this tend to give rather easily with force expanding from the inside.

This is why you drill out holes for the screws.

Once all the screws were in place, I checked that it was mostly a rectangle - and it mostly was - so I could screw up tightly (but not too tight).

That done, I laid the picture onto the frame, and holding tightly flipped it over and pushed two thumb tacks either side to hold it in place.
Flipping back to check it was lined up, then flipping upside down again, I put two tacks top and bottom.
One final flip to check everything was good, before I laid it picture side down and placed tacks all around the edges. About six or seven on the sides, and five across the top and bottom, paying attention to fold and tack the corners.
As I was paying a lot of attention to not damage the canvas as I was doing this, I didn't stop to take photos of this part. Sorry.

My frame-fit canvas hanging on the wall.

The end result hanging on the wall (the one on the left).

I think next time I'm in Big Town I'll get another frame from Action. A 'proper' frame, even if shiny plastic, just looks better than having something on a piece of wood. I'm sure there's another ghost picture, I just don't remember what size it is.

Here comes the cavalry?

And so went the day

I didn't want to think that today's "legacy" was to go spend money and then sit in the sun taking a long time to write something that few actual people bother to read - I think most of my visitors are AI bots trying to "be a better Rick".

So, the first thing I did was to have an Important Haircut. I mean, shit's getting real y'all... 😂

No, seriously, it was breezy when I was sitting outside and I got fed up of it blowing in my face. It's alright for girls, they have hairbands and clips and barettes and such. I... being a guy... have a rubber band. It doesn't do much.
Therefore, time to lop it off. The usual method of hack some off, feel both sides, hack off some more until it feels the same. Professional? Not even sightly. But it took about four minutes with a pair of office scissors and saved me thirty euros plus the hassle of going into town plus the neckache of dealing with that weird bowl thing that barbers use, plus the fact that everybody gives me the cut they think would work for me rather than what I actually want, which is "like this, only shorter". Let's face facts, I'm deeply unsexy and the mess on my head is basically "Boris Johnson only grey". No amount of top notch hair styling is going to make me an Antonio Banderas. So, "like this mess, only shorter". Yet, strangely, nobody ever does. They take your money and leave you looking like you failed out of basic training.

Here's me up a ladder. I'm just to the left of the power pole - middle of the picture, then up and left slightly. Notice the mess of brambles tangled around willow to my immediate right.

Here's a picture from later in the evening when the camera detected movement (the wind blew hard). Notice how it is now all open to the left of the power pole. You'll also see some big willow pieces over on the right, on the picnic lawn.

That was a section of willow tree that escaped the chopping for the phone line as it was growing horizontally, but being low it was a nice climbing frame for brambles. It was quite a mess. Time to sort that out. Well, it "happened organically", in both the sense of growing like that, and in me deciding from nowhere that this is what I'll do right now.

I have some other stuff that I want done, but I'm not sure if my back is up to it. So I have called the guy that did the drain (the very prominent concrete thing in the pictures) to ask him for a quote. A few hours with a chainsaw shouldn't cost too much, and it'll save me thinking about how to bring stuff down.
I didn't call "tree guy" that did the work for the phone line because, well, because I didn't find his bill to remind myself of the cost and of his phone number. I did find Vince's bill and, well, I worked with his mother so it seems like a reasonable thing to put some work in the direction of the relative of a friend - especially since the bill said "amenagement exterieur", so I asked if what I had in mind was something he could do, and he said it was. If the quote is too much, I just won't get it done right now. No big, really, it's just something I'd like tidied up.
Anyway, he lives the next town over so he'll pop by Thursday evening, we'll talk then.

Since I had Some Pig (little mower) running for teaching the brambles a lesson, I went and did around the weeping willow. Then in the potager. Then out front by the cherry tree. Then the old bramble bit by the field barn. Then Pig made a horrific noise and a shower of sparks.

I've whacked a bolt with washer at the end to hold the front shroud in place. I tried to get another one of the many bolt removed, but they had all rusted. I think I'm going to have to drill another hole or two to fit some more bolts. As you can see from the photos, it's an ongoing issue... but in Pig's defence, it's... oh my god... I think we got it from a place up near Rennes (maybe Leroy Merlin?) sometime like 1998. Which means Pig is nearly thirty years old, and has had a long life dealing with the tall grass and brambles. Up until 2009 (as I became gainfully employed) I would use Pig heavily just in keeping the grass sort of vaguely under control. The orchard is now a lost cause, I used to mow it, but it took two days to do it properly and three weeks later would need cut again - multiply that by everywhere else.

It's a shame mom never thought about putting some money aside for a ride-on mower. With the one I have now, I think it takes about two hours to give everything a cut - feasible to do after coming home from work. Marte, the old red rustbucket, used to take nearly three hours. The cutting deck wasn't quite as wide, so it just needed more passes to do the work. Either way, with a ride-on I can keep on top of the grass, make the place look like mom never saw it since the farmer used to cut the Western Wilderness with his tractor, and yes, there's a reason it's called that - even though the name is something of an anacronism these days.

Anyway, huge detour but the point is that Pig has had a lot of use. So the fact that it still works at all is pretty amazing.

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